Collaborative Learning Dashboard
Jotterlab is a next-generation collaboration and learning Web application designed to work with Google Apps right from the get-go. It is created by GSA Pte Ltd and designed to suit the Singaporean curriculum. It integrates features that you have come to expect from learning management systems (LMS) with social networking services and tools
designed for collaborative learning into a single platform.
Features
Google Apps Integration
Jotterlab was designed with Google Apps integration in mind. It provides education related functions to complement the suite of Google Apps services. Right off the bat, users can benefit from ease of use through the single sign-on (SSO) capability between Jotterlab and Google Apps. Between Jotterlab and Google Apps, users need not remember multiple log-in credentials.
Social
Selected social networking platforms are integrated with Jotterlab to make the Web application more interesting and engaging to the users. At the moment of writing, Jotterlab is able to connect users to their Facebook and Twitter accounts and integrate their social networking fabric into one platform for learning. Schools concerned with the cyber safety of their students can opt out of this feature and constrain their learning and social networking processes to within Jotterlab.
Collaboration
Jotterlab features a collaborative learning structure through the use of learning tasks. It collates suitable Web 2.0 tools together in one place for educators to utilise the most suitable artifacts to guide students in the learning process. This structure takes reference from Bloom’s taxonomy to determine the Web 2.0 services that are suitable to aid the learning process. As new products and services become available, the suitable ones will be incorporated into Jotterlab while the irrelevant ones will be phased out.
Benefits
Teachers
Jotterlab spots an intuitive interface that is easy for teachers to perform their most routine tasks such as dispatching and marking assignments, taking attendance and communicating with students.
The dashboard interface includes RSS widgets that lets teachers keepup-to-date with the latest from various Web sites and students’ blogs. A powerful assignment dispatch system gives teachers the flexibility to tag different data structures as assignments to dispatch to students. It automatically creates events in the students’ calendars corresponding to the deadlines for the assignments. The dispatch mechanism is an end-to-end solution for assignment management. Through the dashboard widgets, teachers get easy access to the assignments needing their attention. Flexibility built into this mechanism allows the teachers to exempt selected students from submission deadlines. The comprehensive Workbin widget lets teachers easily share files with other users on the system or the public. The attendance taking page intelligently integrates with Google Docs to store attendance records into spreadsheets.
Jotterlab is SCORM compliant, meaning that teachers need not worry about having their work locked inside Jotterlab. The contents can be easily exported into another system that is also SCORM compliant easily. A scaffolding mechanism lets teachers create collaborative learning tasks to facilitate collaborative learning among the students, leveraging on suitable Web 2.0 tools.
Students
Students enjoy the same intuitive dashboard when they log in to Jotterlab. The customisable user interface lets students personalise their dashboards and make the experience more engaging, thereby giving them ownership of their online learning presence leading to increased usage.
Jotterlab spots a modern look-and-feel that will be visually appealing to students. Together with experimental game mechanics and new learning structures, students can get more engaged with online learning activities.
Administrators
Jotterlab provides a single destination for administrators to create school announcements and events. Google Calendar integration helps propagate the event onto the calendars of everyone in the school. Announcement facility is integrated with other social networking platforms which ensures that the school members can be notified through their preferred channels.
Jotterlab augments Google Apps by giving users the choice to reset their passwords without administrator interference, thereby reducing unnecessary workload of the administrators.
Software Development Philosophy
Jotterlab is a new product developed from ground up to meet the education needs of 21st century. It is the flagship application from GSA. We are dedicated to constantly improving the product as technology moves along.
To this end, we have a dedicated software development team adding new features and security patches on a frequent basis. Users of Jotterlab can expect a patch/feature update at least once every quarter. This is our assurance of software quality to our customers.
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